Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Rapid Innovations in SystEms Engineering and Agricultural Sustainability (RiseEnAg)

North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC

Investigators

Abstract

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research. The projected global increase to 9 billion people by the year 2050 will impose significant challenges on our ability to produce enough food for the world's population. Specific challenges that hinder our ability to meet the world's food security needs include: 1) our inability to sense and quantify, in a strategic way, physical and chemical variables in the environment and in-planta across scales; 2) the lack of scalable data analytics and multi-scale models that transform concurrent datasets across multiple scales into decision making strategies for improving crop yield and minimizing crop loss; and 3) the lack of intelligent data cyber-infrastructures that efficiently integrate heterogeneous data, supporting the development of complex multi-scale biological models. This planning grant will be used to support the development of an Engineering Research Center Proposal on Rapid Innovations in SystEms Engineering and Agricultural Sustainability (RiseEnAg). The proposed Engineering Research Center will use convergent research to accelerate engineering innovation in plant sensor development, data analytics, and data integration via three synergistic research thrusts: 1) Sensor Development, Calibration, and Integration; 2) Data Mining, Machine Learning, and Multi-scale Modeling; and 3) Data Management and Integrative Cyberinfrastructures. Phenotyping testbeds will be engineered to induce complex growth conditions and monitor biological and chemical responses. These "tools of discovery" will address the challenges of today's growers by translating real-time knowledge of crop and soil health and an increased understanding of relationships across the biological scale, into actionable strategies that advance crop field performance, increase post-harvesting longevity, and minimize post- harvest biomass loss. The RiseEnAg Engineering Research Center will aim to target a complex grand challenge (food security) and defines the convergent space of research that merges the ideas, approaches, and technologies from engineering and the biological sciences needed to address it The goal of the RiseEnAg convergent engineering research center is to establish engineered systems platforms that integrate advanced sensors, data analytics, and phenotyping testbeds that address stakeholder (e.g. growers, researchers, and industry) challenges and accelerate research towards the goal of increased food security in the 21st century. RiseEnAg will develop the engineering tools needed to achieve this goal via three integrated research thrusts. Research Thrust 1 (Sensor Development, Calibration, and Integration) will develop and employ sensors for monitoring physical, chemical, biochemical, and molecular parameters, both in-planta and in the environment, to include rhizosphere microbiota-chemical interactomes that are key to plant performance. Research Thrust 2 (Data Mining, Machine Learning, and Multiscale Modeling) will develop scalable modeling and machine learning algorithms for formulating integrative plant analytics and building decision support systems for growers. Research Thrust 3 (Data Management and Integrative Cyberinfrastructures) will develop a robust, adaptable, and scalable framework for storing, accessing, and analyzing heterogeneous biological datasets. High-throughput phenotyping plant growth testbeds will be engineered to induce complex growth conditions and monitor biological and chemical responses in-planta and in the soil. These testbeds will accelerate the identification of novel biological and environmental targets that, when manipulated individually or in combination, can produce the desired performance outcomes under diverse growth conditions. Funds allocated via this planning grant will provide the resources needed to 1) explore and identify unique and common challenges across all stakeholders that, if addressed, accelerate us toward the common goal of agricultural sustainability, 2) identify novel areas of engineering that can contribute to addressing these problems and target potential roadblocks where innovation is needed, 3) outline specific goals for the remaining three fundamental components of the CERC (Engineering Workforce Development, Innovation Ecosystem, and Culture of Inclusion), and 4) formulate working draft of the final CERC proposal. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.